We heard a considerable portion of the argument; and listened to _this_ part of it with a comfortable consciousness that we beheld, in each counsel arguing it, as it were, a viper gnawing a file! If _this_ be law, thought we, then have many thousands of injured gentlemen been, in all human probability, unjustly hanged, and transported for life or for years, been fined, imprisoned, sent to the tread-mill, and publicly whipped; for Heaven only knows how many of the counts in the indictments against--say Mr Fauntleroy; Messrs Thistlewood, Brunt, Tidd, and Ings; Messrs Greenacre, Courvoisier, and many others--have been defective in law! How many hundreds are now luxuriating in Norfolk Island who have, on this supposition, no just right to be there; and who, had they been but _popular_ miscreants, might have collected sufficient funds from their friends and admirers to enable them to prove this--to try a fall with justice and show her weakness; to overhaul the proceedings against them, detect the latent flaws therein, return in triumph to the bosom of their families and friends, and exhibit new and greater feats of dexterity in their art and mystery! Why should not that "_innocent_" convict--now passing over the seas--Mr Barber, on hearing of this decision, soon after his arrival at the distant paradise to which he is bound, take new heart and remit instructions by the next homeward bound ship for a writ of error, in order that he may have _his_ chance of detecting a flaw in one of the many counts of _his_ indictment? But, to be serious again, how stands the case in the present instance? Of eleven counts, six must be in legal contemplation expunged from the record: FOUR, (the first, second, third, and fourth,) because, though in themselves sufficient in law, the findings upon them were technically defective; and TWO, (the sixth and seventh,) because they were technically defective in point of law, though the findings on them were unobjectionable.